The kindness and generosity of the people here was shown to us tenfold today. We had been talking to Phillip (the hospital administrator) yesterday, and told him that this was our last week. Well, we are sitting in devotionals this morning and time comes for the announcements. Phillip begins to talk about how this is our last week, and how much they will miss us, etc. After he’s done saying what he wants to say, he looks at us and says “now you will say something to us.” Kind of like, give a speech, and you don’t have the option of saying now. It just made me laugh! So I said a couple sentences of thanks. Then he looked to Cam and told him to tell everyone how much he appreciated us and how he’ll miss us. Get that! Cam was told to give a speech, and exactly what to say! Again, hilarious! Phillip then presents us each with a wooden statue of San Kofa (a bird symbol that means “back to your roots”, roughly), a necklace with the same figure, and a bracelet with the colors of the Ghanian flag on it. We were so shocked! I’m going to miss those devotionals. They have a special place in my heart, especially since it was there that I led my first devotional.
The other thing we were asked to do, on the spot, is to recite three Twi words or phrases we had learned. Luckily, we both passed the test with flying colors, and the whole room erupted into laughter and applause after each of us finished. Who knew there would be a test at the end of the time? I would have studied harder. 😉 As the weeks have gone on, it has become apparent that the people, especially the older women, are not merely greeting us in Twi, but rather are testing our abilities to learn new phrases. It’s hilarious! For example, it will be the middle of the day, we will have greeted any given person a couple of times by then, and had been at the hospital for hours. All of a sudden, out of the blue, they will say “Akwaaba” to us (welcome). Well, the appropriate response is “Yeasong” (phonetically spelled, I’m sure), which roughly means “received.” All they’re doing is seeing if we know what to say! Such sneaky old Ghanian ladies…. It’ll be interesting to see how much I retain. Here’s what I’ve learned:
Maa Kye– Good morning; Maa Ha–Good afternoon; Maa Kyo–Good evening; Me daase–thank you; Wo ho te sen–how are you?; E te sen–how are you?; Me hoye–I am good; Eye–I am good; Debe–no; Akwaaba–welcome; yea song–received. I think that’s about it. 🙂
I’m going to miss this place. I’ll miss the peculiarities of the delivery of medical care here (well, SOME of the peculiarities anyway), but moreso I’ll miss the people. Lisa and I have both said to each other that if we get sick and need medical care, we want to be flown to Europe or the States!! And if we need to go to the OR, we want the other person to be present, overseeing everything. 🙂
My man with the huge belly and high potassium is doing much better. Turns out he has massive cardiomegaly, for all of you dying to know. What probably happened is that he was admitted (NOT by me, thank you very much!), begun on diuretics before lab data came back, got the crap diuresed out of him, which produced some electrolyte problems, that we identified and fixed by stopping the diuresis. Electrolyte problems being caused by over-diuresis in the setting of failure to check laboratory data before starting the medication…..imagine that…. 🙂